Toddler Shoot – Colin turns 1!

On Sunday I took a picturesque drive to Sharon, MA for a toddler & family shoot. Mr. Colin is turning the big single digit soon, so a coworker of mine asked if I could come take some photos of her grandson and his parents during their visit from New York. I was more than happy to do it!

While I’ve been taking photos of my cousin Noah for his entire life (5 years), this was my first formal toddler shoot, and so there were a few lessons learned:

1. Balloons pop & baskets tip over. Have a back up plan. (Bubbles! Why didn’t I think of that?)

2. Re: baskets tipping over – rig the basket from behind so that it doesn’t tip if the child leans.

3. At least try not to laugh when the basket tips over. (I am such a terrible person)

4. Put something cute on the camera lens or body, there’s definitely something about a person there putting a camera up to their face constantly that is off-putting to little ones. I can’t blame them!

Despite some foibles on my part, we had a great shoot in the homey comfort of grandma’s backyard.

What a cute little guy & beautiful family!

 

The Almighty LinkedIn Picture

3 weeks into my course in Social Media, it’s quickly become apparent how important LinkedIn is for representing yourself professionally – especially the photo. One of our very first assignments was to have an up-to-date LinkedIn profile and a large percentage of that assignment was having at least a decent photo of ourselves from within the last two years, because recruiters and potential employers are much less likely to consider an applicant whose LinkedIn doesn’t have a photo at all. It’s important that your photo is both an accurate and flattering portrayal. Apparently, selfies are a big no-no!

My classmate Meghan didn’t have a photo on her profile, so I offered to take one for her, and I’m really glad she took me up on it!

Since taking Meghan’s photo, I had several friends and family ask me to take professional photos for their LinkedIn profiles, too, so today my co-worker Jessica and I took a break from the office and headed outside to take some shots! This was one of our favorites from the shoot:

I’m guilty of an outdated profile picture, the one I have up is from my college graduation, but it’s so hard to find photos of yourself that you think are flattering and are also professional-looking. Since these are the first of my LinkedIn-specific shoots, I made sure to check in with my subjects, at least showing them the photos on the back of my camera periodically so they could adjust their hair, posture, smile, or anything they saw, didn’t like, and wanted another chance at. There’s nothing worse than sitting for photos and not liking a single one, thinking “why didn’t she tell me I was squinting!”

Let me know what you think in the comments, or if you’d like to set up a session!

Puppies & Sparkles: My First Engagement Shoot

Back in March, I did my very first engagement shoot with some pretty awesome subjects: My sister Erica, her fiancé Jon, and their two pups Layton & Clara. They now live in Houston, TX so not only did we have gorgeously warm weather, we got to explore some cool areas as backdrops for the shoot! A cool mural, a genuine article Bayou, a fun park with fountains. We had some trouble getting the pups to focus at first, but then we started using pieces of left over pizza crust as an attention getter, which worked surprisingly well!

Because I was down there for 4 days or so, we took advantage of the time and did a few different outfits and a few different locations. We also went to the Rodeo (!), ate some pretty freakin’ fantastic authentic barbecue & mexican food…oh, and we saw the premiere of the Veronica Mars Movie!

The best part of it, though, was when I got home from our little mini vaca, I had SO many fun photos to edit.

A little background, my sister Erica plans to wear the sparkly Kate Spade shoes photographed at her wedding. She had them before she had even picked out her dress. 🙂

Layton (left) and Clara (right)

Layton (left) and Clara (right)